What Now

Building of a community

When Billy was about eight months old my sister worked at a pizza parlor. We would go in and have dinner, raiding the salad bar for beans and things Billy could safely eat. The owner was a nice guy slightly older but just a few years. We'd often eat at a table near him and his girlfriend Sam.

One day Sam was talking about these trips she'd go on, and these parties. I found out she was part of a service organization called the Active 20-30 Club. At this point of my mom life I hit a lull. I felt like I never had a conversation about anything other than my baby. I felt uninteresting. So I asked if I could go to a meeting with her. My first hands on was taking local underprivileged kids back to school shopping. I was hooked.

I chaired my first hands on the following summer an ice cream social for Bob Burke's Kids, these were local kids that were differently able. Every week Bob opened up his camp ground and hosted dinner for these families and Cattlemens came out to feed them. Our club would help one night and serve dinner and dessert, and bring arts and crafts for these families to escape for the night.

I went to my first convention about the same time, getting to meet people in clubs all over the country. We all had a common goal, helping kids, and having a good time. I met some of my closest friends that year.

I jumped with both feet in, giving till it hurt over the next eight years. I held every job on the board with the exception of treasurer or secretary, some jobs twice. I chaired more hands on than I can remember, and one heck of a fundraiser. My family attended fundraisers, meetings, parades, and hands-ons together. Heck, at six weeks old Shea was kicked out of his first bar. Before you think I'm a crazy lady. We had rented it for an installation and he wasn't taking a bottle yet, so I figured I would just bring him. Surely it wouldn't matter, oh but it did. At two months I wore him as I worked the door to a fundraiser.

I have a fond memory of Billy maybe three at a regional meeting in Carson City I believe, and he wanted to drink what everybody else was drinking. So my friend Frank grabs a cup filled with grape soda and puts it up to the keg spout and makes a sound like it was pumping beer in the cup. Billy was a happy camper. My family was always around. Mike was known as "the good husband" and my nickname was Mama Sarah.

Another random memory was at another regional meeting. We had just lost a member of our club, the meeting had run long and I could no longer wait to pump but the meeting was so loud and I was tucked quietly away in the back surrounded by my girls and discreetly turned on my breast pump to express some milk, because I was fearful of getting a clogged duct. Well about two minutes later the leader calls for a moment of silence in honor of our friend Corina. All my friends in the back could here was the whomp whomp, whomp whomp of my breast pump, and we couldn't help but giggle knowing Corina would have found it hilarious.

Corina's death showed that the club not only took care of kids in our communities, but we took care of each other. Corina was a single mother to three kids, we rallied around those kids making sure they were taken care of in her absence in the years to come.

When Billy was diagnosed they rallied around my family without skipping a beat. I didn't have to ask them to hold a fundraiser, one was planned. Billy only had to ask once if he had a wish, my 20-30 family made it happen. They fed us, they took the burden of worrying about how we would financially navigate this and made that a nonissue. Many people will never see their impact in their community, but I'm blessed because through Billy I got to see how far my families love reached.